SOURCE: Waswo, Richard. “Critical Perspectives.” In The Fatal Mirror: Themes and Techniques in the Poetry of Fulke Greville, pp. 155-67. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1972.

In the following excerpt, Waswo examines Greville's critical reception and the problems critics face when evaluating his work.

The history of Fulke Greville's reputation as a poet may be regarded virtually as a belated footnote to that of John Donne. Critical respect in the poets' own age was shortly followed by almost total neglect. Although Greville passed unnoticed in Dr. Johnson's criticism of “metaphysical” excesses, he shared in the romantic revival of interest in the quaint authors of the Renaissance. By 1870 he was sufficiently identified with the “metaphysical school,” then in general disfavor, for his editor to protest the abusive use of the term.¹ But in the ensuing flurry of scholarly activity on both sides of the Atlantic from about 1890 to 1920 Greville's position...